How to Make Marketing Part of Your Routine as a Business Owner

marketing

Jul 13

Wearing all the hats and being responsible for all the things as a business owner is exhausting. If marketing your business is a hat you wear begrudgingly or one that always gets shoved to the bottom of the to-do list, then a reset may be in order!

First, join us on Facebook or Instagram every other Wednesday for a live marketing meeting designed just for you - the small business owner or marketer with no marketing support team. We cover topics just like this one to help you dedicate time consistently to developing your marketing strategy. We’re all about support and coming up with unique solutions that move you forward- not create more work for your already packed schedule. There is no judgment for lack of experience or direction in this space!

Let’s dive into the strategy behind making your marketing part of your routine.

Trigger Activities Build Habits

Doing anything consistently becomes easier when we make it a habit. So the real goal here is to make your marketing tasks a habit in your day-to-day life. My absolute favorite way to do this is by establishing what I call trigger activities. A trigger activity is a task in your daily or weekly schedule that you are already doing that you tie to a marketing task. When you do that trigger activity, you automatically also do the task you have tied to it - in this case, a specific marketing task, like publishing a social media post or planning your next marketing campaign.

An example of how I use this personally is setting my trigger activity to be scrolling social media. I typically do this when I sit down in the evening after the kids are in bed. I will scroll social media for a little bit and then move straight into creating my own piece of content to post on social media. If I have time to scroll social media, I definitely have time to also create my own piece of content.

Other examples of trigger activities could be when you sit down to eat a meal or when you first open up your office or shop in the morning. Another trigger activity I use is when I do chores around our farm. While I’m watering the cows or feeding the bucket calf, I’ll start brainstorming my next piece of content or actually collect some video footage while I do the chores as well.

Everyone’s schedule is different and what works for me may not work for you, but the goal here is to identify tasks in your regular schedule that you can tie to your marketing. The more you put this into practice, the easier it will get as your brain learns that at certain times and when you do certain tasks, it’s also time to focus on your marketing responsibilities. One hangup you might experience as you try to implement trigger activities in your routine is finding activities that DON’T work for you. For example, I have often heard from gurus and experts that my morning routine should include my most high-priority habits for my day. But as a mom of four young kids, this did not work for me. But that didn’t mean the strategy didn’t work. It just meant I needed to find a different way to implement it - I needed to find an activity and time of my day that DID work.

Tools that Make Creating Content Simpler

Dealing with complicated software and adding extra steps to your marketing process is not a good way to make your marketing tasks actually get accomplished. Finding more ways to make it easy on yourself means it’s more likely that you’ll get the task crossed off your list. Some tools and software I use that is free or low cost and simple to implement are: